Overt Forms and the Control of Comprehension

This paper shows that the commonly held serial view of the incorporation of overt forms in the grammar (e.g. Hayes 1996 for phonology, and Legendre, Smolensky & Wilson 1998 for syntax) is inconsistent with the even more commonly held view that if two distinct underlying forms are pronounced identically, at least one of them must violate faithfulness. By contrast, perceptual control grammars (Boersma 1998 for phonology, and Jäger 2002 for syntax) turn out to be consistent with this view of faithfulness.